honest-to-goodness gifts.

small stuff i use. nearly every day.

I’ve been wrestling with how or whether I wanted to do gift guides this year. In past years I’ve made guides filled with ideas for giving handmade crafts. I’ve shared instructions for giftable edible treats, ideas for gifts of experience and gifts you don’t have to buy at all. Often, I’ve compiled guides of beautiful gifts made by thoughtful folks. For the last of these, I’ve loved the practice of putting my remedial photoshop skills to work to make inspiring collages of complementary products, steered by things I think must be lovely, but that also look lovely together. But this year, in a new format as a newsletter, I wanted to do something different—something led a bit less by aesthetics or aspirational internet window-shopping, and a bit more by small stuff I use nearly every day of my life and quite like. They’re gifts to me, in other words. And maybe they’ll end up being gifts for you, or people you love. (If it’s kid gifts you’re after, head over to the most-used gifts in my kids’ collection.)

Since these gifts are so personal, some of them are mildly embarrassing, or at least they reveal my eccentricities and might not translate well for your mother-in-law. You’ll also have to excuse, or rather embrace, the photography. I decided it was important to photograph everything myself instead of using brand images and because this is stuff I use, it is used, tampered with, very nearly gone, et cetera. Finally, while the list of gifts is relatively short, it’s long on words and images, so it might get cut off by your email provider. Just click on through to read the whole thing on Substack.

Enjoy.